


Emptied of You

by Austennerdita2533



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: AU in that there's no Hayley or magical babies, Angst, Angst with a happy-ish ending?, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 05:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11936988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: Six months ago, Caroline had thrown his name at the dark like a spear and fled. She’d let the bold, broken letters of him bleed from red to black to gone against the fabric of her retreating back, her doubts muffled by the sound of her scurrying feet as she’d taken off with nothing— except a mouthful of forevers.“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”—Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka





	Emptied of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [honorableotp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honorableotp/gifts).



“Go on and think of me as a she-wolf with a heart made of teeth if it makes you feel better,” she said, “I don’t care. But I’d do it again.”

Jaw taut, Klaus stood at the far end of his en suite balcony with his left hand tucked into his pocket and his right hand holding a drink made of something smooth and strong. He glared out at the rising moon, almost wishing his siblings weren't out of town so he could use them as bait. Or shields. Anything to save him from this bleeding hell!

Caroline approached from behind, her boots clicking against stone, conviction resounding louder with every step she took forward.

“Did you hear me? I said I’d do it again.”

“Yes,” he replied as he emptied his liquor in one swig. He let the glass slip from his fingers to crash down onto the street below. _Ah, such sweet music destruction made_. “Yes, love, I’m sure you would.”

“Don’t you understand why? Can’t you—” Her voice dropped to a whisper, almost trembling, and Klaus tensed as her touch ghosted hesitantly over his shoulders but never made contact. “Won’t you at least turn to look at me?” she asked. 

“No.” 

“Why not?”

“It would be foolish. Reckless as hell.”

“Oh.” He heard the uncertain shuffle of her feet as he exhaled, the quiet sniff of her nose, and he swore the light she wore around her in aura dimmed for a moment before it shined something warmer but more clutching against his back. He felt that invisible tether between them, tugging, tormenting him like the lash of a whip. 

Although it was difficult, he knew he needed to resist falling back toward her again. Klaus swallowed hard, then dropped his head with his fists clenching at his sides, “I’m always soft for you, Caroline, that’s the problem,” he said, sighing. 

“You’re the sun beneath my bloody skin that I can’t stop chasing. You’re the light zipping through my veins that I can’t keep myself from reaching out to try and hold no matter how many times I’m left burning or singed through with holes…and yet you still have the audacity to ask me why. Truly?” His laugh was wounded, caustic. “We both know you’re smarter than that.” 

“Tell me, love, why would I be daft enough to turn around,” he added, grumbling, “when I know one look at you would melt me directly where I stand?”

“Right,” she deflated. “Okay.”

He nodded, “I’m glad we understand one another.”

She took a step back.

“Of course.”

Frustrated, weary, conflicted, and more than tempted to drink away this surprise confrontation with alcohol, he massaged his forehead.Then, after he dragged a hand down his face and closed his eyes in anticipation of her imminent retreat, dreading and desiring it simultaneously, something strange happened: Caroline moved closer. Lunged, truth be told. Her arms snaking around his middle without warning. 

A noise somewhere between a whimper and a sigh escaped her when she pressed her cheek against the fabric of his shirt and breathed him in. Pulling him close—too close. Reeling him in on that god-awful tether like prey. She melded into him like a solid into a liquid, her heartbeat a frenetic song against the muscles of his back, her tears a tap dance along the exposed skin of his neck, the darkness of separation vanishing beneath the fire of her desperation since she seemed determined to hang from the ladder of his spine. To never let go of it again. 

This new proximity to her created a vortex in his chest which cracked like icebones then stitched him up like needleheat. One of his hands slipped near hers of its own volition: hovering but not touching, wanting but not taking.

Klaus couldn’t bring himself to fight against her warmth. He couldn’t fucking _breathe_. 

_How did this happen_ , he wondered? To armor himself in iron only to be disassembled by a single touch. Why was her embrace a nirvana no mountain of pain could snuff out?

Anger and grief lingered, of course. It proliferated in the air around him, piercing his heart like a storm made of daggers every time he attempted to speak, but not enough of it remained to shrug her off. To break free. In the end, she stuck to him like a lost shadow while he choked on the pleasure of suffering.

“I need to tell you something even if you refuse to look at me,” Caroline said in a tone which was equal parts cautious, pleading, and wishful. “Will you let me?”

“I’m listening.”

* * *

Six months ago, Caroline had thrown his name at the dark like a spear and fled. She’d let the bold, broken letters of him bleed from _red_ to _black_ to _gone_ against the fabric of her retreating back, her doubts muffled by the sound of her scurrying feet as she’d taken off with nothing— except a mouthful of forevers.

(Those, as consequence would have it, she’d left unsaid.)

With a lump of cowardice in her throat, plus a mixture of guilt and woe rawing her stomach, Caroline had freaking run. Run away from it all. 

She’d hastened away from a southern city pulsing with magnetism: its streets crowded, forever bustling, as shouting friends reveled in culture or debauchery. It was a place she knew she’d thrived for the past five years. A place she’d grown to love for its sultry sunset moods, its whispered twilight lovers, and its jazzy saxophone blues which soothed lost or lonely souls beneath the moonlight. It was where cobblestone histories wrote tomes against stones, and buildings, and people who were too wrapped up in cuisine or celebration to lend an ear. The wind full of forgotten moments. It was where agelessness chimed from chapels, where flowered herbs grew atop graves but never disturbed the consecrated bones. 

She’d first tasted the power of possibility there. Yes, Caroline had folded herself into New Orleans’ arms with her eyes wide open, her heart neither open nor closed but eclipsing as she’d strolled beneath the eye of her first hurricane to (finally) dance to the tune of dangerous beauty. 

Throughout her stay, she’d helped witches set fire to the clouds, the sky purpling with magic that deserved to be returned to their capable hands. She’d schooled vampires on how to fight with control, patience, and fortitude by using their minds as well as their enhanced senses. She’d chewed through the bonds which had chained werewolves to the phases of the moon and had set them free to follow their own feet, all the while encouraging them to stay with smiles which promised mercy. Loyalty. Friendship. Family. 

She’d killed with kindness almost as often as she’d seethed with rage to become a weapon of her own making: gracious, grisly, great. The city had taught her that true magic sometimes dwelled in shadows beyond the reach of the sun, its black sparks sleeping perhaps, but never dying. And although New Orleans had enchanted her with its ambiguity, with its mystery, Caroline had panicked when she’d realized how exquisitely darkness suited her and had decided to escape before it could claim her completely.

But there was also more to this getaway. Something worse, and, arguably more…problematic. (Borderline reproachful, honestly.) You see, it wasn’t just a _what_ she’d fled from, but a _whom._ Plural. 

The Mikaelsons. 

Rebekah, Kol, Freya, Elijah, and Marcel, who, with their offerings of blood, censure, teasing, bickering, and protectiveness, had come to regard her as kin (with a ‘double-cross-me-and-I-will-stab-you’ kind of attachment, of course, but whatever), indulging her with things like a a room of her own, beignets, excellent booze, bitching, arguing, broken furniture, and headaches for days. They’d welcomed her as one of them with fangs and fists, with trust and reliance. Not only had they fought with her side-by-side to bring peace back to New Orleans, but they’d also managed to find time to initiate her into their (ridiculously) dysfunctional family tribe. That meant Caroline had participated in everything from Thursday night sing-offs with Kol and Marcel to screaming matches with Rebekah over ‘borrowed’ shoes; and that she'd engaged in anything from French Quarter ‘suit’ business with Elijah, to discreet matchmaking for Freya, to swanky parties with costumes, and to refereeing over presumed family betrayals.

It had been absolutely freaking exhausting at the time, and, yet, weirdly… enjoyable, too.

All that said, Caroline had left them all behind. Deserted them all without warning. She’d left no crumbs for them to follow, no allusions as to where or when she could be reached again. No explanations as to why. She’d done nothing but tuck this short, half-assed note between the pages of Elijah’s favorite Mozart symphony before strolling out the front door:

 

_I’ll already be gone by the time you read this. Off somewhere on my own. I promise I’m safe so it’s no use coming after me, especially considering I learned how to disappear from Katherine. Stay put, do your thing. Know I don’t want to be found._

 

_Don’t kill each other, okay? I’ll miss you._

 

_—Caroline_

 

_P.S. Tell him I’m sorry, but my heart’s a wandering thing._

 

Yes, she’d run from, him, too. (Run from him most, probably.) 

_Klaus_. 

She’d abandoned the tortured, tender man who unapologetically bulldozed every damn wall she’d tried to erect between them since their worlds first collided back in Mystic Falls. A man who, when he wasn’t shoving her out of her comfort zone (and on her ass), or driving her mental with his arrogance, cynicism, jealousy, paranoia, temper tantrums, etc. would scrape the pits of heaven or hell to give her anything she desired. Everything. Oh, how he would kill to kiss his dynasty of night beneath her skin! How he would die to feel her soul finally sink into his with a wolf’s bite, clutching almost possessively! How brutally bad he wanted this “thing” between them to last!

Despite his patience and how he’d never prodded for more than she gave him, however, Caroline could feel that one unfulfilled hope of his growing hungrier and hungrier with need the longer she’d stayed. 

Intensity had rippled from Klaus like a soft, shimmering shadow. It’d stretched out like it wanted nothing more than to caress the monsters free from her head, and she’d watched as it clouded over his face with worry and disappointment each time she’d retracted, pulling away from him and into herself. Tucking her monsters into coffins he couldn’t penetrate. 

“ _Please, why won’t you let me_?” he’d seemed to ask without speaking, his eyes searching, his touch digging gingerly for skeletons he couldn’t find. “ _Why won’t you let me in to comfort you? We’re the same, you and I, 'we’re the same_.' ”

His wishes thumped. They’d sparked beneath his chest with a fire that melted into honey each time their eyes met or their limbs had tangled beneath the sheets until morning. Like a hummingbird, he’d hovered. He’d waited, and waited endlessly, for her to invite him all the way in so he could entomb his lovelines somewhere precious and warm around her heart where they would keep. Wanting only to know he belonged to her in a way that tackled levity and uncertainty for good. 

But all Caroline had for him at the time were little half-smiles. And lips that half-kissed. And forever dreams that half-existed. And fears which had compounded into restlessness so strong and so irresistible, they’d ushered her away from him with no farewell spoken between them. 

It had been unbelievably cruel to do that, not say goodbye - selfish even - but that word always tasted like rubber in her mouth any time she’d tried to say it to him in the past. Wrong somehow. So she’d kept silent. She’d let it crash and burn in the blackness behind her while she’d chased the sunrise alone. 

In the end, the colors of dawn had streamed in through that still-misty window to grip Caroline by the soul. They’d stirred her to her feet as a message had ribboned through her bones, pleading for her to heed it:

 

_Seek._

_Find._

_Learn._

_Know._

 

_Go on now. Go, go…_

 

And she had.

She did.

* * *

 “I left to hunt the light,” Caroline said with a clearing of her throat.

“The light?”

She nodded against his shoulder. “I followed it in order to see where it led…to explore places I never knew I needed to see.”

“Without me.” Klaus meant it as a question but it came out blunt and flat. Like the period at the end of a lazy sentence. 

“Yes,” Caroline exhaled slowly, “without you.”

“With no forewarning, no parting line?”

“Yes.”

Klaus frowned. Repressed the urge to mutter something about her ‘ _tiresome bloody explanations_ ’ by scraping his knuckles across his lips. “Why? Why couldn’t you have at least tried talking to me about it first?”

“Because I…because I couldn’t.”

“Why?” he repeated again, this time more demandingly.

“There was so much blood between us, Klaus! It was everywhere, it was...it was in everything,” Caroline said, each syllable fraying his confusion into disillusionment. “It rushed so hard and clumped so deep that most of the time I couldn’t tell where the hell you ended and where I began. We were bound by blood in too many ways, you and me, and I - I just didn’t want to see it, okay? I didn’t want to know it. I was so—”

“Ah, I see,” he interjected. He stiffened when he perceived her intended meaning: so soft but puncturing, so honest but injurious. It caused him to razor his reply with more sharpness than wryness, “And I suppose you’re saying it’s too messy for your liking, hm? That my past atrocities have stained too much of your life for you to have been able to stay or truly care for me?” 

“What?” 

“Really, sweetheart,” he continued in that brusque, callous way of his that made a laugh sound diseased, “I thought you’d shoulder guilt better than this by now. You should’ve saved yourself the expense of a trip back here because—”

“Stop.” 

“It’s fine. Go.” He waved her away. “I understand.” 

Using her fingernails like a vise, Caroline clamped down hard on his elbows before he could break free to sulk. (Or worse, to tear into an innocent throat.) Tension plucked between them like pliant tendons refusing to snap. It stretched his thoughts in so many different directions he couldn’t weave them together in a manner which made sense or didn’t ache from the strain.

“My God, why are you so freaking infuriating!? You can’t survive without hearing the sound of your own voice for five seconds so you jump to conclusions before you give me a chance to finish speaking! I can’t take it!!!” she said, probably rolling her eyes.

“Perhaps you should’ve stayed away then.” He hated how bitter and waxy the retort tasted on his tongue, how hollow it sounded as it left his mouth, but he said it anyway. 

“I have tried, Klaus, believe me!” Caroline snorted weakly, her voice resigned to some emotion he couldn’t decipher. “Listen to me when I say I have tried long and hard to stay away from you. Do you have any damn idea how much time and energy I’ve wasted trying to keep myself from crashing into the truth?”

A jolt of something old and familiar fired across his chest at this. He inclined his head to the side ever so slightly, ears burning. What was it? What was she saying?

“I mean, not only did I baulk at princess bracelets and shred horse drawings, but I spent months in Mystic Falls being bitchy and hostile and mean. I hurled insult after insult at your face! I told myself one romp in the woods would be enough to get you out of my system. I helped my friends devise ways to kill you, remained with Stefan despite knowing he’d always put his brother and Elena before me, swallowed all of my cares for your family, for New Orleans, and cursed when the universe saw straight through my charade.” 

“Writing off our connection as ‘no biggie’ for years,” she paced behind him, “I tried to deny. Ignore. Forget. And push it all away. I’ve wanted to believe that we -" she signaled between them "- _us_ , were casual and not meant to be more, so I snipped the dark from my heart. I sprinted after the light because I thought it’s where I belonged.”

Klaus gulped, his throat dry and rough all of a sudden. “And is it?”

“I know I’ve been awful, hurtful beyond words,” Caroline continued, gliding over his last comment, “and I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry, Klaus…” She paused for a moment. Collected another breath before reaching out to touch him again with tender trailing fingertips. “But I can’t do it anymore, okay? I can’t.”

“Do what?” he said.

She sighed heavily. “Pretend.”

“Pretend?” Confusion, so many conflicting thoughts, galloped in his head. "Pretend...what?"

“That I can endure a life emptied of you, because I can’t," Caroline offered simply. "I _won’t_.” In an effort to somehow illustrate this point further, she shook her head, letting her forehead roll back-and-forth along his shoulder. “Am I making myself clear yet?”

“And your wandering heart?” Klaus asked as he scratched his teeth along his bottom lip and remembered the pain that line from her letter had wrought. Then recalling the overwhelming sense of loss that’d slammed into his chest like a skyscraper full of bricks, his knees nearly shuddering as the memory hit him afresh. 

He’d sensed her hesitancy toward commitment throughout their five years together, of course, but he thought it’d give way with a little more time as a couple. Months, years, decades, centuries—who cared precisely when? He’d been in no rush. He’d believed her nomadic feelings were bound to settle eventually. Or perhaps it would’ve been more accurate to say he’d ‘ _naively hoped_ ’ they would. That is, until she took off with her fucking wanderlust and had left his heart to rot without her. “What of that? Hm?”

“It wandered away so it could drift back. Back to where it’s belonged all along,” Caroline answered. 

“I suppose you mean here?”

“I do. Only I was too stubborn to see it. Terrified, really.”

“How illuminating. So after all this, after everything,” Klaus started, his tone harsh, “you expect me to forget the torment of losing you? Forget how you left me feeling both drowned and deprived at the same time?”

“No, I don’t. All I’m asking is for you all to try and forgive me enough so I can care for you like I couldn’t before.”

“Oh?” he clenched, his back still turned to her, his heart pumping loud and red with a yearning just at the edge of a bruise. “And how’s that exactly?” 

“Recklessly. Completely.”

Klaus bit back a scornful sound. All of his undead fears pricking, poking, prodding at theshreds of hope which still survived in a small area behind his ribs. “Why should I believe you?”

“Maybe because I’ve never lied to you before, so why would I start now? Or maybe because I needed to leave,” she sucked in a breath, “for my heart to know home was more than a place for me, and that I’d want to find my way back to it for good someday soon.”

Stepping closer, Caroline folded her hand into his then twined their fingers together with a squeeze so ripe with feeling, that it was as if she’d crossed the world just to hold it again. 

“I’m done making wrong turns, Klaus. No more running, no more careless mistakes. Home is forever now, okay?” 

“Home for me is…” She paused, but there was no shame in what came next, no irony, “Well, you,” she said frankly. 

_One_. _Two_. _Three_ seconds of hybrid defibrillation. Then— 

A growl which disintegrated into a moan almost immediately. His head spinning, spiraling, his stomach lurching up into his throat only to plummet down through the ground past his toes to feast on disbelief. Fists of fury unraveled like rope, his posture softening the moment he pulled her in front of him and caged her between his arms against the railing with no way out. She would listen now.

“Damn you,” he said.

Silence.

“How in hell do you always manage to say things that have me dying to kiss you when I should want nothing more than to tear you apart with fangs?” 

Caroline shrugged then. Reached up a hand to cup his face.

“Sorry, but it’s not like I can help that I’m in love with you, you know? Besides,” she added with a twitch of her lips, her thumb scratching along stubble, “it all comes out in moron supposedly, anyway. Or so they say.”

Trounced, conquered, and not to mention a tad stunned at this, Klaus raked over her face with a combination of anger and attention in his gaze. He drank her in like the starved beast he was while the knife of her words - which she’d never spoken before but were ones he’d longed to hear for many years past - twisted and turned inside of him, slicing deeper this time. Making him pant because he still hungered for the blade of her mouth; he still coveted the spikes of her heart. 

He always had. 

And in that moment when he pulled her against him to let their mouths and bodies collide, shutting her up hard and fast, her love’s blood seeping in to fill up all the places she’d emptied inside of him six months ago, magicking the two of them back together like a dawn-kissed midnight which could bloody well last forever, the poor bastard knew he always would.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a heck of a time trying to get this idea out of my head and down on paper, so I'm neither satisfied nor quite sure what this is supposed to be? But I tried and I hope you enjoyed it regardless. Comments are always greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks for reading. xx


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